Homecomings

As I always do around now, I'm thinking of the men and women who serve/have served in our armed forces. And more than in other years, the words "brothers and sisters" come to my mind.  

In this tumultuous time, I’m steering clear of any political slant for my Veterans/Remembrance Day post. I’m instead giving you a video of a colleague of mine as he arrived home from a tour of Afghanistan, and a poem.

First, the colleague; you’ve probably seen this before, but I am so proud to be working with him and all the other vets in my company:

I dare you to watch this without a huge grin on your lips and tears in your eyes.

I normally save poems for National Poetry Month, but Walt Whitman’s “Dirge for Two Veterans” seems right. My other poem today is Walt Whitman’s “Dirge for Two Veterans”. Whitman had an up-close-and-personal view of the War Between the States; he volunteered as a nurse and witnessed some of the worst that could be seen, considering the carnage of that war and the state of medicine at that time.

The grave he describes is a double one: father and son, not an unheard-of event in that particular war.

“Dirge for Two Veterans”

THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the east, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles;
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring;
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive;
And the day-light o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd;
('Tis some mother's large, transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march, you please me!
O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music;
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.